A standard feature of the post-Communist, tourist-friendly Central European city is the nostalgia pub. Stylized Soviet-era hero-workers or soldiers exhort the postmodern traveler to enter and drink. Inside, portraits of Communist leaders look down on the scene, while ancien regime marches can be heard interspersed with contemporary pop songs. It's all very arch — the Communist period has left us with much to ridicule. But as much as this commercialization of the anticapitalists must offend those who were persecuted in Communist jails or saw their aspirations strangled by the dead hand of Communist repression, it also fails on aesthetic grounds. What exactly is the point in experiencing a faux Communist landscape in a post-Communist environment? Are we struck by the contrasts between then and now, or by the similarities between propaganda and advertisement? Does the consumer (native or tourist) come away with insight into either economic system?

A visit to Budapest's Szoborpark, one of the most famous collections of Communist statuary, provokes the same frustration. Szoborpark's brochure serves up a glib commentary on the rescued monuments arranged around the grounds — something about an infinite loop and the impossibility of exit — but the ambiguity is sterile, the interaction with the Communist pantheon unenlightening.

Communism was not particularly funny, though it did lend itself very well to satire. But post-Communism is even less so. Is this the best that can be done in the post-Communist era, to drag out the fallen idols for idle mockery? The nostalgia bar and the statue park alike suggest an end of history, where everything that is worthy of ridicule lies in the past, while we can adopt a position of double superiority. Spending time in the company of the left's defunct symbols, we assert our rejection of Cold War verities. But we also gladly accept one of the greatest of these, that a historical battle has come to an end, and one side won.

A few performance artists might have had a hand in the system's demise by creating a space of ambiguous, and therefore less vulnerable, dissent, and by inviting the public's active participation in dadaist acts that underscored Communism's prevalent absurdity. There is no better example than Waldemar Fydrych of Poland's Orange Alternative, an underground collective that staged happenings in the city of Wroclaw in the 1980s. Fydrych's "socialist surrealism" began with mysterious symbols: crude paintings of elves on city walls in the places where security police had painted over oppositional graffiti. The elf provoked the viewer, aligned as it was with neither side, yet somehow opened a space for public enjoyment. In June of 1987, the elves came alive, as dozens of people dressed in orange caps danced in the streets, singing and distributing lollipops to children, before being arrested. Participants in Orange Alternative happenings lost their fear of public space, and could cast the Communist regime as ridiculous in a time and place when regaining one's political autonomy was crucial.

The challenge for the dissenting Eastern European artist has only increased since the fall of Communism. If reaching an audience is easier in a climate of free expression, economic and social anxieties now put that audience at a greater remove. Eastern Europe has become ground zero for the mantra "There is no alternative" — a stance that preempts and deflates dissent. Thus, opposition to post-Communism tends to be bitter, retaliatory, and suspicious: hardly an environment conducive to artistic expression. In today's more slippery era, in which the "enemy" is less defined, the prankster must confront the bystander, even provoke her into action.

Artists in the Czech Republic — where conventional wisdom long ago proclaimed capitalism's total victory — have been particularly active in the post-Communist era, with acts that respond to their specific transition to passive consumers. The first happening staged by the Prague collective Ztohoven reads like a direct link to Orange Alternative. In the spring of 2007, Roman Tyc (a pseudonym meaning Mr. Romantic) replaced the stencils on some 50 "Don't walk" lights throughout the city. The signs now forbade walking a dog, drinking a beer, or crucifixion, and the flashing red lights became a commentary on limits to public behavior. Orange Alternative's Fydrych had observed that under Communism, one could only be free in church, in prison, or on the streets. Now, Tyc asked, did the streets actually offer freedom? Anyone who has felt the absurdity in two crowds of people facing each other across an empty intersection, waiting for permission to step off the curb, could feel the call to emancipation.